


Sync

by cytheriafalas



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the prompt "those two are so in sync like drift compatible in sync n it's funnycute at the office but frighteningly efficient in the field. Things explode people die england is safe n they're back to being disgusting" on my tumblr. Find more of me at fangirlingtendencies.tumblr.com</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sync

Bors was still new to being a Kingsman, still in awe of the more experienced agents. Lancelot told him that would fade. Once you got to know them as people instead of legends, it got a little harder to worship them. And it was true. Lancelot became Roxy and he learned that she preferred vodka to scotch, had the highest rate of success in honeypot missions with a male or female target, really disliked oxfords, and was still afraid of heights. It humanized her.

But whenever he saw her talking to Galahad or Tristan, Bors became moderately more certain that no matter what he found out about those two, they would remain unapproachable. It was the little things, the way Galahad bent his head toward Tristan before he even started speaking, the way they fell into step whenever they walked, even if it was from one end of the briefing table to another.

They were mirror images of one another, but not, he realized, watching them both reach out with their right hands to pull open the double doors to the front of the building. They were perfect duplicates, and it was a little frightening.

It was, “Tristan, do you have—” and papers placed in Galahad’s outstretched hand. Sometimes it was Galahad taking a breath to speak, and Tristan offering whatever he’d been ready to ask for, sugar for his tea, a knife for dinner, a gun at the shooting range.

It was, “Galahad, are you—” and a quiet smile, a hand on a shoulder, and the subject dropped.

Sometimes it wasn’t as obvious as all that. It was debriefings where they wove together stories half-sentences at a time, started by one and finished by the other, sleeping on planes after hard missions, or not sleeping on planes after harder missions.

After one of those missions, Merlin had picked Bors and Lancelot up on the plane and then swung an hour south to pick up Galahad and Tristan. Lancelot had warned him to give the two of them space, that something had happened, and they were likely to be in rough shape.

Bors acquiesced, then retreated to the far end of the plane, claiming a seat and beginning to put together his notes. The plane landed with a bump, a rough landing for Merlin, and a few moments later, Merlin and Lancelot jogged down the stairs and returned much more slowly, each with a man holding heavily onto their shoulder.

He tried not to stare. It wasn’t gentlemanly. But they were both bloodied, suits torn, hair askew. Studiously, he turned his attention back to the tablet in front of him. Somehow Galahad and Tristan ended up three-quarters of the way back, nearer him than Lancelot or Merlin up front, a first aid kit balanced on their touching knees.

“I told you,” Tristan said, voice rough.

Galahad tilted Tristan’s head up, reaching blindly for something from the kit. Tristan passed it to him. “They were torturing you. I was not going to stand by.”

“It wasn’t somethin’ I couldn’t handle.”

“There was no need for you to handle it,” Galahad said, rubbing ointment along a shallow cut on Tristan’s jaw, “so I saw to it you didn’t.”

“You risked yourself for me. How many times have I told you not to do that?” Tristan demanded, grabbing Galahad’s wrist.

Galahad shushed him, glancing in Bors’ direction. He continued to make notes on his tablet, adding the third synonym for “assassination” in a row to his sentence.

“Now is not the time for this conversation. How is your shoulder?”

With his eyes down, Bors couldn’t see what Tristan did, but he heard a hiss of pain and assumed the man had shrugged. “I won’t be climbing trees any time soon, but I think I’m okay.”

“We’ll have Merlin look at it when we get back.”

The pair of them fell into silence and Bors risked a glance up. Galahad was tending to another cut along Tristan’s cheek with an alcohol swab, while Tristan spread a butterfly suture across a deep cut on Galahad’s forearm.

“This will need stitches.”

Galahad made a soft sound of agreement. “It’s a small price to pay.”

“Bors,” Roxy called. “Can you come here, please?”

Bors went to her, careful to keep his eyes on his tablet as though he was having trouble writing this report. It didn’t seem to matter. Neither man paid a whit of attention to his passing.

 

A month passed and then two and Bors forgot. Arthur, the former Tristan, began to push for larger groups of Kingsmen working together. They could always work solo, but something that had happened before Bors’ recruitment had shaken the organization. Even he could tell that much, so many new recruits at the same time. Probably it had to do with the time everyone tried to kill one another. He’d started to ask Lancelot one time, but she’d given him a vague answer and the too-still expression on her face had clued him in that it probably wasn’t something he needed to know.

He got used to hearing two pairs of footsteps so in sync they sounded like one person, he even got used to one of them flinging a pen or a stapler or a water bottle over his head to the other. And he’d only gotten hit once when Merlin hit a surprising spot of turbulence just as Tristan tossed a bundle of keys toward Galahad.

And he forgot all about either of them, huddled in the corner of their target’s bunker with Lancelot, bleeding from half a dozen bullet holes in half a dozen different locations. Shoulder, calf, thigh, hip, back, bicep. She had bound the wounds as best she could, but Bors wasn’t stupid. He knew the chances of getting out alive decreased with every heartbeat.

“Merlin, you’ve got to get us help,” Lancelot said.

“I need you to hold on for another ten minutes,” Merlin said, and Bors thought he could hear the regret in his voice. Regret and resignation that he would soon have to replace two of his agents.

“I don’t think we have that long.”

“Backup’s coming,” Merlin promised. “Hold on.”

At the first explosion, Bors thought he was hallucinating, at least until the second explosion and the screaming started. Then, at the grim smile on Lancelot’s face, the slowed cogs of his brain began clicking back into position. He’d almost figured it out when the door opened and Tristan stepped in.

“Look what we have here. Can you walk?”

None of the bullets had shattered bone, so Bors nodded. “For a bit, yes.”

Lancelot slung his uninjured arm over her shoulder and heaved him to his feet. Burning pain like a connect-the-dots rolled through his body, but survival lay at the end.

Galahad was waiting just beyond the doorway, his gun in his hand. “We have incoming down the left and right passages. The one ahead of us is clear for the moment.”

Lancelot shook her head. “The one straight ahead leads to a stairwell and the basement. Bors is in no condition to climb through windows. The one to the left is the one we need.”

A click of a new clip sliding into a gun and Tristan exchanged looks with Galahad. “We go to the left. Stay behind us.”

Stumbling along at Lancelot’s side, Bors had no idea why it hadn’t occurred to him that the perfect knowledge Galahad and Tristan seemed to display of one another had been born of battle. Each step perfectly in sync, bullets flying and ricocheting, Tristan ducking as Galahad spun to shoot two men coming down a side hallway. Galahad offering a shoulder for Tristan to brace himself after he ran three steps up a wall and kicked two men in the head on the way down. When they went back-to-back in an intersection, squeezing off rapid shots in tandem.

The intricate ballet was so mesmerizing that Bors almost forgot that he was leaking a trail of blood behind him until they reached the stairs down to the front lawn.

“Keep going straight ahead. The car’s waiting at the base of the hill. We’ll catch you up,” Tristan said, turning to follow Galahad up a flight of stairs.

“Where are you going?” Lancelot asked.

Tristan just smiled, a bright and disarming smile, and took the stairs two at a time.

Lancelot and Bors had barely reached the car when a deafening explosion sounded behind them, and a few moments after that, Galahad and Tristan jogged up and drove the car to the waiting jet.

Once Merlin let Bors out of the infirmary, Lancelot took him to the cafeteria for breakfast, insisting that he eat something not good for him in celebration. As they passed a table in the corner, Bors heard Tristan’s voice.

“Do you have… Thank you.”

“Where is… Oh, very good.”

“What time…?”

“Merlin is expecting us in forty-five minutes.”


End file.
